Assistance Identifying an Insect

[vpnisnice]

I gave some tobacco seedlings to my brother a few weeks ago, I go to check on them today and see them in not very good shape. Was checking a bunch of the leaves with random holes in them, and this was the only living thing I saw that might be related to the problem. My brother is an arborist.

Any idea what this little thing is? Looks almost like a tick to me, but I'm not sure. Looked like it only had 6 legs, whereas most ticks have 8 afaik. As you can see it has little bits of red at the back, similar almost to a black widow spider in style.

The holes in the leaves might even be from some other critter, like a caterpillar who wasn't present when I looked at them just now because it was the middle of the day.

Any help would be much appreciated. From my closest research it seems like it could be a tobacco flea beetle, but it juuuuust doesn't look quite bang on. Unsure.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Looks like a Japanese beetle.

 

[vpnisnice]

Looks like a Japanese beetle.

Hm I considered that as well but it defs doesn't look like the pictures. Pure black up top, not any sort of green at all. And the bottom doesn't look nearly as striking. Doesn't really look like it has a "shell" in the sense that the japanese beetle looks like there are two distinct parts, a front and back. Hmmm!!!!

 

[deluxestogie]

Timarcha intricata. It's a leaf beetle.

Bob

EDIT: There are over 30,000 species of beetles in North America.

 

[Knucklehead]

Agricultural Systems : Tobacco

www.ipmimages.org

 

[vpnisnice]

Agricultural Systems : Tobacco

www.ipmimages.org

Ah boom excellent resource thank you! Tobacco flea beetle it is! Much more realistic photos on that page vs google searches that are almost like too HD so they don't really give you a realistic view. Definitely japanese flea beetle.

 

[Knucklehead]

Ah boom excellent resource thank you! Tobacco flea beetle it is! Much more realistic photos on that page vs google searches that are almost like too HD so they don't really give you a realistic view. Definitely japanese flea beetle.

Look at google images of the milkweed leaf beetle. Bob may have nailed it.

 

[deluxestogie]

Flea beetles eat a collection of tiny, round holes in the leaf, making it look like the leaf was targeted with birdshot.

Bob